''Escape from Sahara'' (German: ''Madeleine und der Legionär'') is a 1958 West German

adventure An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Wolfgang Staudte Wolfgang Staudte (9 October 1906 – 19 January 1984), born Georg Friedrich Staudte, was a German film director, script writer and actor. He was born in Saarbrücken. After 1945, Staudte also looked at German guilt in the cinema. Alongside ...

and starring

Hildegard Knef Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef (; 28 December 19251 February 2002) was a German actress, singer, and writer. She was billed in some English-language films as Hildegard Neff or Hildegarde Neff. Early years Hildegard Knef was born in Ulm in 19 ...

Bernhard Wicki Bernhard Wicki (28 October 1919 – 5 January 2000) was an Austrian-Swiss actor, film director and screenwriter. He was a key figure in the revitalization of post-war German-language cinema, particularly in West Germany, and also directed se ...

and Hannes Messemer. It was shot at the

Tempelhof Studios The Tempelhof Studios are a film studio located in Tempelhof in the German capital of Berlin. They were founded in 1912, during the silent era, by German film pioneer Alfred Duskes, who built a glass-roofed studio on the site with financial back ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

with

location shooting Location shooting is the shooting of a film or television production in a real-world setting rather than a sound stage or backlot. The location may be interior or exterior. When filmmaking professionals refer to shooting "on location", they are ...

taking place in

Cuxhaven Cuxhaven (; ) is a town and seat of the Cuxhaven district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town includes the northernmost point of Lower Saxony. It is situated on the shore of the North Sea at the mouth of the Elbe River. Cuxhaven has a footprint o ...

and in

Tangier Tangier ( ; , , ) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital city, capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Moroc ...

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

. The film's sets were designed by the

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

Andrej Andrejew Andrej is the form of the given name Andrew used in Slovak, Croatian and Slovene. Notable individuals with the given name Andrej *Andrej Babiš (born 1954), Czech politician *Andrej Bajuk (1943–2011), Slovene politician and economist *Andrej ...

Fritz Lippmann Fritz Albert Lipmann (; June 12, 1899 – July 24, 1986) was a German-American biochemist and a co-discoverer in 1945 of coenzyme A. For this, together with other research on coenzyme A, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in ...

and

Helmut Nentwig Helmut Nentwig (1916–2007) was a German art director.Bergfelder p.254 Selected filmography * '' You Can No Longer Remain Silent'' (1955) * '' Bonjour Kathrin'' (1956) * '' The Simple Girl'' (1957) * '' The Big Chance'' (1957) * '' Munchhausen ...

. It was part of an upsurge of popular interest in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

about France's War in Algeria, particularly Germans serving there.Biess p.93

Synopsis

A French

teacher A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching. ''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. w ...

assists a German serving in the

French Foreign Legion The French Foreign Legion (, also known simply as , "the Legion") is a corps of the French Army created to allow List of militaries that recruit foreigners, foreign nationals into French service. The Legion was founded in 1831 and today consis ...

who has deserted.

Cast

as Madeleine Durand *

as Luigi Locatelli * Hannes Messemer as Robert Altmann *

Helmut Schmid Helmut Schmid (1925–1992) was a German actor. He was the husband of actress Liselotte Pulver Liselotte Pulver (born 11 October 1929), sometimes credited as Lilo Pulver, is a Swiss actress. She was one of the biggest stars of German cinema ...

as Kilby, Pat * Joachim Hansen as Kurt Gerber *

Harry Meyen Harry Meyen (born Harald Haubenstock; 31 August 1924 – 15 April 1979) was a German film actor. He appeared in more than 40 films and television productions between 1948 and 1975. In the 1960s he also worked as a theatre director in West German ...

as Jean de Maire *

Leonard Steckel Leonard Steckel (18 January 1901 – 9 February 1971) was a German-Jewish Siegbert Salomon Prawer, ''Between Two Worlds: The Jewish Presence in German and Austrian Film, 1910-1933'', Berghahn Books (2007), p. 213 actor and director of stage and sc ...

as Ben Achmed *

Werner Peters Werner Peters (7 July 1918 – 30 March 1971) was a German film actor. He appeared in 102 films between 1947 and 1971. Biography Peters was born in Werlitzsch, Kreis Delitzsch, Prussian Saxony, and died of a heart attack on a promotion to ...

as Brouillard *

Siegfried Lowitz Siegfried Lowitz (22 September 1914 – 27 June 1999) was a German actor. Born in Berlin, he played the Hauptkommissar ''Erwin Köster'' in the German television drama '' Der Alte''. Prior to his tenure as Hauptkommissar, he played a killer ...

as Kapitän Gerlach *

Hanita Hallan Hanita () is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the western Galilee approximately 15 kilometres northeast of Nahariya, it falls under the jurisdiction of Mateh Asher Regional Council. In it had a population of . History Antiquity Hanita ...

as Miss. Price *

Manfred Heidmann ''Manfred: A dramatic poem'' is a closet drama written in 1816–1817 by Lord Byron. It contains supernatural elements, in keeping with the popularity of the ghost story in England at the time. It is a typical example of Gothic fiction. Byro ...

as Perrier *

Friedrich Gnaß Friedrich Gnaß (13 November 1892 – 8 May 1958) was a German film actor. He appeared in 53 films between 1929 and 1958. Partial filmography * ''Beyond the Street'' (1929) – Der Matrose / The Sailor * ''Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness' ...

as Germanini * Ursula Diestel as Lucienne Germanini

References

Bibliography

* Biess, Frank. ''German Angst: Fear and Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany''. Oxford University Press, 2020. * Broadbent, Philip & Hake, Sabine. ''Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989''. Berghahn Books, 2010.

External links

* 1958 films 1950s adventure films German adventure films 1954 drama films 1950s German-language films German drama films West German films Films directed by Wolfgang Staudte 1950s German films Films shot at Tempelhof Studios Films about the French Foreign Legion Algerian War films UFA GmbH films Films shot in Morocco Films with screenplays by Johannes Mario Simmel {{1950s-Germany-drama-film-stub